Author: Alaaddin Başar (Prof.Dr.), 09-5-2006

Allah Almighty announces. “Every soul (person) is bound to taste death, and We try you through the bad and the good things (of life) by way of testing (so that your real character and rank may reveal itself). In fact, you are on the way to return to Us, (to finally be brought to Our Presence).” (Al-Anbiya Surah, 21:35)

The world is a realm of testing. In a hadith, the world is presented as “the field of the Hereafter.”

This world was created as a realm of testing and a field of the Hereafter, not as a place of pleasure. In this testing field, men continuously endeavor and work hard. Again here they arrange a vineyard for the Hereafter and finish their days exhausted.

Man who works in the field is contented with a piece of bread and yoghurt instead of portions of foods, lies on the soil or grasses and has some rest. He would not deem them strange. And he is not disturbed by them. He does know that he will get back to his village and find his welfare and ease of mind there.

The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) announces, “There is no comfort on earth.”
It is by no means possible to obtain tranquility and welfare in this strange world in which day and night chase each other, diseases and health are visited on man in turn, storms and stillness prevail over human soul in succession.

There is no comfort on earth but is bliss for believers. If man has tasted of faith and taken the way of good deeds in this world, he acquires some sorts of benefits on behalf of the Hereafter. And most importantly, he tastes the comfort of knowing that the world is not a place of comfort and he gets rid of discomfort.

Our surroundings are swarming with incidents that all the time interprets this hadith.

On the one hand, the killers of faith who keep struggling to put man into a wretched position, enemies of chastity, to make it short “evil networks”… Pubs, which are marketing poison, gambling houses with filthy air, fashion networks, which are hostile to modesty, novels, and stories that stimulate young brains into corruption… And obscene scenes that appear on the screens of televisions all over the world, which gnaw at souls… Heart-rendering news, which inoculate despair into the hearts… Never-ending fights, murders, traffic accidents… The slanders that never fail to be missing in the arena of politics, defamations, lies, back-biting…

On the other hand ruined families, which have lost their means of respect and love… Corrupting common usages and figures of expenses that swell up with extravagance. Sleep-spoiling payments.

And wretched, destitute and ephemeral man in the face of these so many material and spiritual distresses which are conducted by human hands and make some people troublesome for some others…

This picture is a most clear indicator showing the human heart would not be satisfied with the world and is a pioneer of guidance which turns the attention of man into another realm.

Indeed, there is no comfort on earth. For the essence of this field of testing is not proper for this. There is no comfort in the testing. You cannot observe an unending spring in the inner world of man as in our surrounding. S/he also has winter, summer, and autumn.

S/he does not always have calm weather; s/he has a flash of lightning, storm, and hurricane. You cannot see him/her lit up all the time; s/he also has darkness, shadows, and clouds. His/her crops are not all the time of the same sort; s/he has flowers, fruits, and thorns. His/her field is not always even, s/he has mountains, cliffs, brooks.

As long as we are firmly convinced that this is so, our standpoints towards the occurrences will change, we shall substantially have delivered ourselves from untimely sorrows, excitements, gloom.

All this is a witness that there is no comfort on earth.
However, one needs not to confuse comfort with bliss. There is no comfort on earth but are welfare and bliss. These concepts look to souls not to bodies. As for soul, it finds welfare and becomes blissful both in this world and in the Hereafter through faith, good deeds, righteousness, and good conduct.

People who use their every feeling and emotion on the right path experience a sort of paradise-like life on earth.